


The Girl Who Got Away

by Lady_R



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Amputation, Body Horror, Burns, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death Fix, F/M, Fire, Fix-It, Mild Gore, Missandei Lives, Spoiler 8x04, Spoiler Season 8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 20:26:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18924439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_R/pseuds/Lady_R
Summary: Missandei of Naath is prisoner of Queen Cersei Lannister, who uses her as leverage to keep Queen Daenerys Targaryen away from King's Landing. Unskilled with weapons and alone in a hostile place, she can only remain in waiting and rely on her knowledge to prepare an eventual escape.Grey Worm watches from a distance, unable to cope, facing his greatest fear for the first – and maybe only – time.





	The Girl Who Got Away

**Author's Note:**

> This is a moderate tweaking of the events ranging from "The Last Of The Starks" to "The Bells". Cersei doesn't have Missandei killed, but rather mutilates her. This doesn't prevent Daenerys from destroying the town, since she'd still be too far gone and struck in her pride, not to mention the entire deal with Jon Snow and Varys. However, Missandei is still around, living and breathing. 
> 
> Missandei's death was ill-received by the fans, and I stand by this point. This is how things could have been had D&D been the slightest bit more thoughtful.  
> With that said, I'm not black. I am open to any suggestion and modification in the portrayal of these characters.

The man they call The Mountain – if there’s a man at all behind the cold helm that covers the entirety of his face – swings his sword so quick, Missandei doesn’t even feel the blade strike. 

When the pain does come, accompanied by a thick and warm stream exploding down her neck and on her shoulder, she tightens on herself, and her cry gets lost in the clear blue sky. 

She catches a glimpse of her own ear falling down the battlement. Only at the last moment does she scream at herself to grab on, not to meet her ear’s same fate. She crawls away from the precipice, 

_It’s but an ear_ , she reminds herself, muffling her scream with her own fist. The other hand, placed on the side of her head, is just as soaked as her neck is. 

Even after wiping away her tears, she can’t read the faces of Queen Daenerys, nor of the other advisors or Grey Worm’s, but just imagining his grief is enough. 

For a moment it looked as if it was over – and she’d fall down, down the battlement onto the dry ground that awaits meters below.

But the woman that calls herself the Queen won’t let her die: she needs her to keep Daenerys Targaryen under her thumb, striking at her pride, or her sisterhood, or both. And to this hope, Missandei clings as if she was back into the water, flapping between the waves in search of air that isn’t there. 

-This will be all.- Cersei announces, eyes staring way above Missandei’s head. Her voice comes blurred to the ear that isn’t there. -For today. I advise you to pray whichever deity you worship that your queen acts reasonably. There’s more of you that we can send her.- 

Missandei looks away in return. Daenerys will help her, she always did. “Without the Dragon Queen, we’d all be dead”. She takes a deep breath, of a dry air that tastes foreign and bitter, and stares at the pale, clear sky.

 

Marselen is trying, but every moment he spends with him feels like a needle being jammed into Grey Worm’s mind. He has his sister’s thick eyebrows and heart-shaped lips, and little sparks of her gold glitter into his eyes. It’s like seeing her again, and a painful reminder of the symmetrical, bloodless face she’s supposed to be. 

-I should have know. I didn’t keep my eyes on her. And now…-

-Do not blame yourself.- Marselen says, and Grey Worm winces as he feels his palm on his shoulder. He wiggles himself out of his hold. 

-Such is war.- Marselen insists. -Please. We can only pray, now, that she’s no further harmed.-

Grey Worm shakes his head. -Has the Lady of Spears ever wiped the tears of a grieving brother?- 

There’s silence, in between the snowflakes. The people of the North worship either trees with eyes,  a mysterious man with a sword of fire, or a family of seven that somehow share the same vessel: Grey Worm has a hard time feeling interest for either, but the Bride of Battle shares for him the same indifference of these new figures.

He didn’t ask for much – Missandei of Naath by his side, and a life for her as gentle as she is – and none of his prayers have been answered. He gives Marselen a distant glare, as if he had never seen his face before. 

-She’s all I’ve ever had.-, he groans. 

-That is true.- Marselen leans on his spear like a walking stick. His eyes shine like Dragonglass. -And I envy you, my friend. May you never know the pain of grief.- 

“We’re both Unsullied, after all.”

-Mossador’s death was a grave loss for us all.-.

The other doesn’t look persuaded, and Grey Worm regrets his words. His teeth chatter, as if he was struck by a sudden fever.

-Meralias.-

Grey Worm staggers back, Marselen’s eyes chasing after him like a fly. 

-There was another before, and his name was Meralias. His wrist was strained, and his dog kept on breathing even as he wrapped his arms around his neck. Meralias was his name. Please, remember it for me: for soon I may be the last one to speak it.- 

-I will, my friend.-. Grey Worm takes a step forward, offering an open palm. -I’m sorry.- 

Marselen throws himself at his brother-in-arms, and his tears trickle down Grey Worm’s shoulder. 

 

The place where her left ear should be pulsates and stings under the bandage. No fine thing, probably as soaked as her clothes, but it keeps the wound covered, and it’s all that counts. 

The bread is white, with a brown crust that trickles down like chalk as she breaks it between her fingers. It tastes sweet, cold, and it fills her stomach just fine. 

Missandei wears no manacles for her lunch, but only a fool would try to take the chance and run off. A scribe’s armor is her wits, she has learned during her time in Astapor, and silence and complacence can hide a potential greater than any blade.  

When the palace trembles, the small table she was eating at becomes her hiding place, even if it’s not an earthquake that’s going on. May the Lord of Harmony forgive her, she has no idea what that is, it’s like the city itself is cracking into two part by part, and a dragon is growling, and bells are ringing, and people who clearly aren’t of arms are screaming for their lives, and even the soldiers who were supposed to keep her trapped had ran off, putting their survival before obedience as if they were mere sellswords. 

Missandei snatches the rag she was given to wipe her face and ties it around her mouth and nose. If any guard sees her crawling by the walls, squinting desperately through the dust that covers her face, they are too busy running away to remember she’s even there. 

“That is fine: all that I need is to remember it myself.”

At some point, getting lost becomes a danger even greater than being crushed. But she reaches the room with the map – the first landmark of King’s Landing she had made a point to remember, planning her eventual way out from the inside without the Queen ever coming to know – and she allows herself to collapse around a column. 

A man whose face she can’t see marches up a ramp of stairs, but there’s a girl with him, and she has a sword. Missandei hugs the stones, as silent as the butterflies she has so often prayed. 

-I remember you.- the girl says, walking up to her. Her name is Arya of House Stark, and she offers her an open hand. -Come with me, Missandei of Naath. This city is falling apart.- 

 

The spear pierces the soldier’s chest plate like butter, and his pink face flushes as he falls to his knees. Grey Worm rips the tip of his weapon off the man’s body and slashes the throat of a second who had raised his sword at him. They fall like grass being sliced, spraying blood in place of lymph. The man around him, Northerners or Unsullied like him or what have you, scream at the skies for every new soldier that falls. The ground is sticky under his soles, the faces of the fallen enemies are a carpet of rosy and red. 

-Torgo Nudho!- 

A hand clamps itself around his wrist, and he knew it was Marselen before he had spoken. 

-My friend! Please! Put an end to this madness!- 

Grey Worm jams the tip of the spear into the knee of another soldier, growling in his face as he backs down in pain. He rips his arm from the other man’s hold. -They deserve to die. All of them.- 

-They have surrendered!-. Marselen’s voice cracks. -We have to run. We have to…-

-They took her!- 

Unsullied do not hate just as much as they do not love: they simply obey, and the victims their Masters task them to kill are meant to be nothing but nameless faces. They don’t want them dead, nor do they want them to live – they do not want, and that is all. -They took her, and they deserve it all! Why would we show them mercy now?- 

-You don’t know if she’s dead!-. Another crack at the last words. -She’s clever, you know…-

-What if she’s dead?-. Grey Worm faces the other man through a curtain of tears. -How do you lose all the family you had left, and feel no hatred for the ones that did? What will you do?- 

-I will pray, my friend, and weep for her as I did with my brothers. But I’m tired.- 

A soldier of the Lions slams his sword towards Marselen’s face, only for the blade to meet his shield. He pierces the spear into his nose. 

-We all are tired. And we were free, just a moment ago.- 

 

Arya Stark moves around King’s Landing as if she had lived there since she was born, as agile as a cat, but not so fast Missandei loses track. Her boots were not meant for running, and her throat burns of thirst. Even the air around her body seems to quake at every new explosion. 

“Wildfire. So that’s what it is”. A demon has taken the place of the Silver Queen, and rides on Drogon’s back above them, leaving destruction and crying in its wake. Time and time again, her soles stomp on what could only have been human remains. She keeps the vomit within her throat by focusing on running, and running, and keeping on moving. 

“I will find Queen Daenerys and ask her why. She will know. There has to be a reason”. If the Lord of Harmony is watching such a display, he’s probably frowning in confusion. Daenerys Targaryen, murdering innocents, bathing them to death with the fire of her children. Soldiers and civilians, children even… there’s abandoned toys in the shapes of horses and knights, humble wooden things, laying on the stones next to her knees. 

This has been her queen, all along, recklessness building within her day by day.

“So much for the Breaker of Chains”, Cersei Lannister had said. In the end, it seems Missandei can only believe in Missandei if she wants to face another day in such an inhospitable place.

Arya Stark sneaks under a small wooden bridge, above a stream now reduced to a puddle by the dragon fire, and Missandei follows suite, curling up in a ball. The rag she used to cover her mouth is now dangling from her neck: she dabs it in the puddle and ties it back into place. 

-They rang the bells.- she pants. -I heard them. Why didn’t she stop?- 

Arya shakes her head, crumbs of dust falling from her bangs. 

-Have you seen Grey Worm?- Missandei attempts again. With the lack of one ear, it sounds as if she’s screaming into a copper cup. 

-He was with my brother, Jon Snow. I know nothing else. But he’s a valiant warrior, I’ve seen him fight. He will succeed.- 

“So is she”, Missandei thinks. “She slayed the Night King, and she’s by my side”. She massages her numb hands and sheds some tears to clean her eyes. Suddenly, a girl screams: not of pain, but of fear. 

 

A Lannister soldier, cheeks as pink as a pig, an unkempt lemon beard sticking out from under the helm, swings his sword one inch from his nose. Grey Worm pierces his leg with the spear, the tip sticking out from the other side. Thick tears run down his face as he lands on his back. 

-Is this what we do, now?- Marselen's eyes are wide and bloodshot. -We slaughter those who surrender? Are we also going back to slaughtering babies?-

“Mine had eyes of dark brown, almost black. Missandei has eyes like this as well”. He should have said _had_ , but those words are too much even for him. Grey Worm hesitates, hands shaking around the spear. -Who are these people, to us?- 

-No one, by themselves. But they need a savior, my friend, and that savior is us. I will help you in any way I can. If dead she is, we will mourn together, and offer her the memorial she deserves. But I beg you to put an end to this. I swear to you here and now that she’d want it as well.-. 

Grey Worm’s fist shakes. The man at his feet shuts his eyes and covers his face with his arms. Even his life, in his eyes, is worth living. Surely worthier than his, if he becomes a slayer of innocents. “Like the Queen up above”: a Queen he no longer recognizes. Fire crackles on all sides, but his skin feels cold, as if a fever boiling within him was fading away. 

He emits a sob, but no tears escape his eyes. Unsullied aren’t supposed to be defiant, but only Grey Worm chooses for Grey Worm, and he will choose with the wisdom only a scribe can inspire.

-Stop!- 

The Unsullied hold in place like a single man. The King of the North watches from afar, mouth agape. Grey Worm pays him no heed. 

-Find the survivors!-. Grey Worm’s throat itches as he screams the new command, but he repeats it once more, and twice again in the Valyrian tongue. -Find them. Keep them safe! This is not who we are! This won't be who we are!- 

-Find the survivors!- Marselen repeats, and places his hand on Grey Worm’s shoulder. This time, he does not swat it off.

-Sir.-. The soldier at his feet wipes off the snot and looks at Marselen's open hand with wide, terrified eyes. The Unsullied offers him a careful smile. -I’m aware this is repentine, but we’re now here to help. Dandelion, Rhodonite, help me with this one. Grey Worm, lead us out.- 

“Thank you, my friend”, Grey Worm thinks, and holds onto his spear like a rope in the storm. 

 

Even between fire and blood, a Northern soldier has the gall to force himself a woman. 

The expression of surprise his face forms when Arya’s knife cuts his throat ear to ear is like a glass of water on Missandei’s sore throat. The Northern girl throws the corpse behind like a mannequin, and Missandei walks around it to reach the stranger, still laying on her back. 

-Thank you.- she chokes out; but to hear it all, Missandei has to turn to the side. Arya gives a nod in response. Her brown hair are stained in red, a stream of dried blood runs from her nose. 

-What’s your name?-, Missandei whispers. 

The other woman’s fingers tighten around hers. -Hazel.- she whispers. 

She leans on the wall to stand up, removes her hair from her face with what can only be read as rage. The wide neckline of the dress she wears, silk once green, now so stained in dust and gravel it has the color of swamp water, says all Missandei needs to know about her profession. She offers her an open hand, and squeezes it tight. 

-We must find a shelter.- Hazel unties a string from her dress and ties her hair in a ponytail. She offers two more to the other girls, and Missandei takes hers gladly. -I know where to hide. Every whore must know. There’s no one that can reach her now.- 

Missandei shuts her lips at the thought of “her”, flying above their heads and bathing in the misery of innocents. The smell of burning corpses is now so strong it fills her entire nostril. She takes the dead man’s dagger to herself and holds it as tight as Grey Worm’s own hand. “I’m not a warrior, nor do I wish to be”: but the time of wishing has long passed. Hazel takes the sword, scabbard and all, and holds it like a fishing rod rather then a weapon. Missandei thinks back of Queen Daenerys’ own sword, and the undead she had slain when Sir Jorah Mormont was no longer enough to keep her safe: it feels like another person’s life entirely.

-Oh!- Hazel wails. Three Dothraki riders loom above them, sweat foaming on the sides of their horses. Arya takes one step forwards, sword drawn. 

A square-jawed man with a raven braid, seven bells dangling from the strands, leads the trio. But he lowers his arakh, and his eyes look beyond the warrior woman. 

-Missandei of Naath.-, he says in the Dothraki tongue. -Slayer of Mountains. You speak for the Khaleesi, and to you we will listen. What are we to do with these two?-

-They trust me.- Missandei tells Arya and Marei. -Drop your blades.- 

The sword tinkles against the stones, and the knife a moment later. Missandei removes the cloth from her mouth and stretches her back, despite the ground itself trembling under her feet. 

-These two are with me, Deorro.- she says in Dothraki. -And we request your horses.- 

The three horse lords nod, as if a thousand bells dangled from her hair.

 

The last thing he had heard before slipping into unconsciousness – ground rumbling under him, tiles raining from atop the roof – had been Marselen’s voice calling for a _brother_. 

-Brother.- he repeats, blinking into the darkness. He clenches his teeth in pain, running his hand on the fabric on his forehead. “Unsullied can’t nurse”: yet he sees Marselen’s eyes, and his thick eyebrows, and beautiful full lips smiling at him. 

-You’re fine.- a voice says with Marselen’s accent. A female voice, however. Grey Worm’s eyes block open, the place he’s in blurs for a time that feels eternal. 

- _Missandei_.- 

-I’m here.-. She whispers, and she looks as magnificent as the Bride of Battle herself, even with grey dust coating her face and a coarse bandage around her left ear. -I’m here, my love. Don’t strain yourself. Your head is hurt.- 

-Brother. She’s alive, I told you. She’s alive and well. She escaped the Mountain himself, and rode Dothraki horses to find a shelter for us all.-

“This is Marselen, for real”. And there he is, holding his sister so close their forehead touch one another. Above himself, Grey Worm sees a wooden roof, and brown walls of the same material. -Mother!-, somebody calls. At least three more voices erupt in sobs. 

-A secret underground passage from the castle to a brothel.- Marselen’s chalk white teeth glisten like diamonds as the light of the torches digs into his frown. -These Westerosi lords really think of everything. I just wish these poor people had found it -

There’s a man on his left, his face so burn it’s now the color of blood itself, and some other on the right, wrapped head to toe in a sheet. And the blade of the dagger in Missandei’s hand is crimson of blood, some drops still trickling all the way to the floor. 

-You killed, my love.- he exhales. -Did someone else dare to hurt you?- 

Missandei shakes her head and strokes his cheek with a soft finger. -Someone else was hurt. We all did our part, and we still do. This is a place of survival, not death.-

A pale woman with brown hair cradles a blonde child against her chest, singing a song about a woman who dances with ghosts. Another woman, about Missandei’s age, but much darker of skin, sits at the bedside of an older one – her mother, he assumes – and holds her hand into hers as she wails between gritted teeth. 

He sees stumps in place of hands, thick pink bandages where noses and ears should be, legs that end up in piles of bloodied rags rather than feet. Then he notices again the blood on Missandei’s dagger, and more than ever is he grateful he has met her.  

-I did not know you were skilled in the medical art.- 

-I am not.-. Missandei wipes her dagger with a cloth and walks up to a lit torch. -But many of the nurses are dead, and one must learn quickly if they want to adapt.- 

She places the blade upon the Flame, watching it redden and tense. -This is us, now. We can’t go back. But the way of the Naathi is to grow what we can from burned terrain.- 

-I will take you there, once this is over. I swear.- Grey Worm proclaims, and takes Marselen’s hand, pulling him to sit on his cot. 

 

Obsidian and Stalwart Shield rush down from the stairs, carrying a child each, while Thyme, Valorous Blade and a white-haired man from the North whose name he cannot recall mount guard at the entrance, blades drawn and eyes unflinching. Two women in grey cassocks, heads covered in veils – the holy women of the Faith with the seven gods, if Grey Worm remembers correctly – roam around the room, bed to bed, suffering person to suffering person. 

Away from the flames, and the madness of she whom they once called “Breaker of Chains”. 

But chains are no more: and now, where she breaks, someone else will build back. 

Arya Stark carries a child atop her shoulder, wrapped in a blanket head to toe. Crying erupts from the bundle, and it makes Missandei’s heart churn. It is true: so much for the Breaker of Chains. Mother of Dragons, mother of monsters – and a monster at heart, at the end. 

“Did she even miss me?”, Missandei wonders. “Or was my lost ear just a blow at her pride?”

She shakes her head and turns to the bed at her right. A man lays on a sheet, his right arm covered from shoulder to fingers in dark grey crusts, as coarse as volcanic rock, and with the scent of pork left too long on the fireplace. Grey Worm twiddles his nose, opening his fingers. 

-Allow me. You did quite enough.-

-Thank you.- 

He takes the offered knife and slashes off the whole arm with a blow so swift, the stranger’s scream comes a whole second late. 

-I will care for this one.-. It’s Hazel, now covered with a black cape. Her face remains impassible as the man’s blood fills the bowl. -You did enough, and twice that. King’s Landing owes you greatly.- 

-I did what I could.- Missandei says, but her eyes glisten in well-deserved pride. -I will be back soon, to tend to more wounded.- 

-And so will I.- Grey Worm proclaims with all the determination of a soldier. 

The corridor seems endless, and Missandei’s head is but an inch away from the ceiling. The secret passage the kings and nobles of King’s Landing would use to fulfill their carnal needs. Even the ones on the wheel aren’t above it. Northmen would sing, during their ride to King’s Landing, how warmer a woman’s hands are compared to the cold of precious metals. 

Even some freed Unsullied would enter brothels just to be embraced. As for Grey Worm, he’d rather give embraces than receive: Missandei is there, and he’ll never let go of her again. 

-How did you escape?- 

-They were in panic.- Missandei said. -Arya Stark of Winterfell found me and made herself my temporary guard. I suppose she was glad to see a familiar face. I know I was.-

She leans against the wall. The ground is shaking again, but this time, she does not. 

-And I am more glad now.-. Her lips form a smile, as strained as it is. -Marselen told me you gave the order to protect these innocents. I expected no less- 

-For a while, I had been blind. Lost in the past, I’d say. But I thought of what you’d do.- 

His voice shakes, as if he was afraid of confessing a sin. Missandei looks at him, deep into the eyes. -And you did well. ’Tis all that matters now.- 

Despite the crying, screaming, growling of rubble above their heads, their world is as silent as snow. And too dark to see through, was it not for the torches. 

-We defied the Queen.- Grey Worm’s voice is a whisper, as if they were sharing a secret. 

Missandei removes the string from her hair and ties it back, forming a neat puff. -Are you afraid? Of her, I mean.-. A question that, she hopes, would appease her latent panic. 

-I had one fear, remember that. A fear that I left behind.-

Grey Worm removes his gloves and wraps his arm around Missandei’s side. Drogon growls somewhere far, unseen, somehow easy to ignore. If there’s anything left for his mother to burn, there’s no way he’d ever find it. Stored away like seeds before the winter: a winter of ash, rather than snow. Missandei takes the offered hand, warm and sturdy against hers.

-And whatever will happen, I have the bravest woman in all the lands to protect me.- 

-I promise I will.- 

Missandei’s voice rings through the corridor as she pulls Grey Worm’s lips to hers, and relishes in the warmth coming from their embrace. 

**Author's Note:**

> – I thought very carefully on how to keep the impact of Missandei's death without taking her life. I first thought of having The Mountain cut off her hand, mimicking Jaime's own mutilation, but I quickly realized Missandei needs her hands to work. After all "every man needs hands". A foot was the next option, but I quickly discarded it, as it'd have impeded the escape, and it carried some negative implications. I settled with an ear.   
> \- A scene I hated with a burning passion in The Bells was the one where Jon Snow rescues a nameless woman from being raped by a nameless soldier, which seems to exist for no other reason except to show that Jon Snow is a Nice Guy (tm). I started imagining it with Arya in place of Jon, as I felt it'd have been more impactful than trying to save a random woman in the crowd (and unsuccessfully at that), showing how Arya can use her skills as an assassin and a warrior not just for vengeance and war, but also to help those in need. I originally wanted to use a prostitute from the books for this scene, such as Marei, but I decided to have her be an OC instead.   
> – The Dothraki rider Deorro owes his name to the homonymous DJ. His stage name had always struck me as a missing Dothraki character, and this is how I put it into play.   
> – I made up the name Meralias for Missandei's third brother, trying to harmonize it with her name, Marselen's and Mossador's. I used no letter that didn't previously appear in at least one of their names. For the other Unsullied, I followed the book canon in which they tend to give themselves the names of plants, minerals and weapons. I even sneaked in Stalwart Shield.


End file.
